It is desirable for the cabin arrangements of a civil airliner to have some flexibility. Accordingly, the passenger seats being supported by longitudinal rails, it is advantageous to be able to modify the transverse position of the rails relative to the median vertical longitudinal plane of the cabin.
In an ordinary section of the fuselage, this does not give rise to any particular difficulty. The rails conventionally rest on crossmembers that extend perpendicularly to the longitudinal direction of the fuselage and are supported on lateral portions of the fuselage. Thus whatever the position required for the seat rails, the rails rest on the crossmembers.
Things are different in some particular sections of the fuselage. This is the case of the wing box that lies in the fuselage aligned with the wings. This is also the case of the main landing gear well accommodating the main landing gear supporting the fuselage directly. In these two particular areas, the structure of the fuselage includes beams extending in the longitudinal direction of the fuselage: these are beams in the case of the wing box and gantries in the case of the main landing gear well. In these two areas, the architecture of the fuselage and transverse deformations to which it is liable to be exposed prohibit fitting the aforementioned crossmembers. This is why, in these areas, the rails are carried by links themselves carried by the longitudinal beams. It is therefore the position of the latter that conditions the position of the rails in the transverse direction, which therefore cannot be chosen at will.
This architecture also prohibits subsequent modification of the position of the rails. Thus customers such as the airlines are not able to customize the cabin in these areas.
An object of the invention is therefore to improve the flexibility of the cabin arrangements, notably at the level of the wing box and the main landing gear well.